House Votes to Fund Government, Delay Obamacare

28 Sep 2013

UPDATE: The House voted 231-192 to keep the government open and delay Obamacare. Harry Reid has said that the Senate will reject the measure.

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On Saturday, House GOP Leadership announced plans to take up the Senate stop-gap spending bill and attach a one-year delay of ObamaCare and the individual mandate. The House is also likely to attach a measure continuing funding of the military in the event the Senate fails to act on the larger funding bill by the Monday midnight deadline. The House action makes it likely that the government will shut down, at least for a few days, on Tuesday.

On Friday, the Senate passed a stop-gap spending bill that would fund the government through November 15. The government’s current spending authorization expires at midnight on Monday. If agreement on new spending authority isn’t reached by then, which seems likely, most parts of the government would shut down.

House GOP Leadership released the following statement on Saturday:

The American people don’t want a government shut down and they don’t want ObamaCare. That’s why later today, the House will vote on two amendments to the Senate-passed continuing resolution that will keep the government open and stop as much of the president’s health care law as possible.

The first amendment delays the president’s health care law by one year. And the second permanently repeals ObamaCare’s medical device tax that is sending jobs overseas.

Both of these amendments will change the date of the Senate CR to December 15th. We will also vote on a measure that ensures our troops get paid, no matter what.

We will do our job and send this bill over, and then it’s up to the Senate to pass it and stop a government shutdown.

The House will vote on its package Saturday afternoon. The Senate is not scheduled to return to Washington until 2pm on Monday. It will have just 10 hours to consider and pass the House measure to avert a government shutdown. It will certainly miss that deadline.

A great deal of ObamaCare has already been delayed by the Obama Administration. It has delayed the employer mandate and delayed the opening of small business health insurance exchanges. Delaying the rest of the law for a year makes policy sense. We are, however, in a season of politics, not policy.